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PLANNING PHILOSOPHY AND THOUGHTSOF “SIR PATRICK GEDDES”

Presented By:Yamang TagguIst Year M.Tech, IDS Mysore

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• Sir Patrick Geddes  (2 October 1854 – 17 April 1932) was a Scottish biologist, sociologist, geographer, philanthropist and pioneering town planner .

• He is known for his innovative thinking in the fields of urban planning and sociology.

• He was responsible for introducing the concept of "REGION“ to architecture and planning and is also known to have coined the term "conurbation“

• A conurbation is a region comprising a number of cities, large towns, and other urban areas that, through population growth and physical expansion, have merged to form one continuous urban and industrially developed area. A conurbation can be confused with a metropolitan area. A metropolitan area consist of a central city and its suburbs, while a conurbation consists of adjacent metropolitan areas that are connected with one another by urbanization.

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• While he thought of himself primarily as a sociologist, it was his commitment to close social observation and ability to turn these into practical solutions for city design and improvement that earned him a "revered place amongst the founding fathers of the British town planning movement“

• He believed in socio-evolution: Societies with "universal Education which would improve their surroundings; these would upgrade society, which would then improve the surroundings, and so on.

• Patrick Geddes, who was highly influenced by earlier theorists such as Herbert Spencer and Frederic Le Play, expanded upon earlier theoretical developments that lead to the concept of regional planning.

• He is the father of modern town planning and regional planning.

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• In his book ‘Cities in Evolution’ published in 1915, he advocated the sequence of planning to be:

i. Regional survey.ii. Rural development.iii. Town planning andiv. City design.• These steps were required to be kept

constantly up to date.

PLANNING CONCEPTS:

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PLANNING PHILOSOPHY

1. The concept of “Place ,Work and Folk”2. Conservative Surgery.3. The Outlook Tower- “The observation technique”.4. Diagnostic survey – civic survey.5. Valley Section Principles.

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French theorist Frederic Le Play, theorize that society could be explained by the interactions among three units of society including• Place( Environment)• Work (Function) and • Family.

1. The concept of Place ,Work and Folk : “Geddesian Triad”He was the First to link sociological concepts to town planning

Place(environment

Work(function)

Family(organism)

Geddes adapted these theories, changing the last Le Play's social units from "family" to "folk”. From Geddes perspective, the purpose of his theory was to understanding relationships among the units of society and to find equilibrium among people and the environment to improve conditions. In the context of this theory, family was viewed as the central “biological unit of human society.”

“Single chord of social life of all three combine”.

His central argument was that physical geography, market economics and anthropology were related to yield a “single chord of social life of all three combine”.

Physical geography

Market economics

anthropology

Place(environment)

Work(Function)

Folk(organism)

CITY

In Geddes on words “Town planning is not mere place planning, nor even work planning. If it is to be successful it must be folk planning”

• Geddes championed a mode of planning that sought to consider "primary human needs" in every intervention, engaging in "constructive and conservative surgery "rather than the "heroic, all of a piece schemes" popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

• To demonstrate the practicality of his ideas and approach. In 1886 Geddes and his newly married wife purchased a row of slum tenements in James Court, Edinburgh, making it into a single dwelling. In and around this area Geddes commenced upon a project of "conservative surgery": "weeding out the worst of the houses that surrounded them…widening the narrow closes into courtyards" and thus improving sunlight and airflow. The best of the houses were kept and restored. Geddes believed that this approach was both more economical and more humane.

• Thus “The conservative surgery” demonstrates how one can accommodate changes without bulldozing the large sections of an old city for the purpose of development.

2.Conservative Surgery:

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3. The outlook tower – “The observation technique” :

• In 1892, to allow the general public an opportunity to observe  the relationships among place, work and folk, Geddes opened a “sociological laboratory” called the Outlook Tower .

• The topmost storey was allotted for visitors to have a broad outlook of the city.

• The storey below was allotted for sciences starting from geography , astronomy,history etc.

• Continued to down floors having city maps, survey data of Scotland, Great-

Britain , Europe and finally the Ground Floor ended in exhibitingThe oriental civilization and general study of man.

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• The Outlook Tower was built in Edinburgh's Old Town and continues to be used as a museum.

• Geddes’ hope was that visitors would exit the Tower with a new perspective on the Scottish capital and an understanding of how they could play an active role in its future through schemes for social improvement such as his own.

• The Outlook tower was a powerful tool in communicating ideas about the wider context in which cities exist and develop.

• In the mid-twentieth century the Tower passed into the hands of the University of Edinburgh, who subsequently sold the building to its current owners who have turned it into more of a theme park than Outlook to wider ideas.

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4. The Diagnostic Survey- “ Civic Survey”:

• Geddes advocated the civic survey as indispensable to urban planning: his motto was "diagnosis before treatment". Such a survey should include, at a minimum, the geology, the geography, the climate, the economic life, and the social institutions of the city and region. His early work surveying the city of Edinburgh became a model for later surveys.

• He was particularly critical of that form of planning which relied overmuch on design and effect, neglecting to consider "the surrounding quarter and constructed without reference to local needs or potentialities".

• Geddes encouraged instead exploration and consideration of the "whole set of existing conditions", studying the "place as it stands, seeking out how it has grown to be what it is, and recognizing alike its advantages, its difficulties and its defects":

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5. Valley section Principles :

• Geddes drew on Le Play's circular theory of geographical locations presenting environmental limitations and opportunities that in turn determine the nature of work.

• Geddes points out how the geographical features , the contour and relief are associated with primitive occupations of man.

• In 1909, Geddes planned the Zoological Gardens in Edinburgh, which led to his development of a regional planning model called the Valley Section. This model illustrated the complex interaction among bio-geomorphology, natural occupations such as a hunter, miner, or fisher that are supported by physical geographies that in turn determine patterns of human settlement . The point of this model was to understand processes by which relationship between humans and then environment could be improved through regional planning.

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Accordingly the miner, the woodman and hunter on the heights, the shepherd on the grassy slopes, the poor peasant on the lower slopes, the rich peasant on the plain and finally the fisherman at sea coast are not only controlled geographically, but are also conditioned by their environment and occupation which is manifested in their settlements.

“ Geddes says the violation of this principle will not only result in daily economic waste but also end in aesthetic ruin”.

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Work in India : Between 1915 and 1919 Geddes wrote a series of "exhaustive town

planning reports" on at least eighteen Indian cities, a selection of which has been collected together in Jacqueline Tyrwhitt’s Patrick Geddes in India (1947)

 He held a position in Sociology and Civics at Bombay University from 1919 to 1925.

His principles for town planning in Bombay demonstrate his views on the relationship between social processes and spatial form. They included: ("What town planning means under the Bombay Town Planning Act of 1915")

• Preservation of human life and energy, rather than superficial beautification.

• Conformity to an orderly development plan carried out in stages.• Purchasing land suitable for building.• Promoting trade and commerce.

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• Preserving historic buildings and buildings of religious significance.

• Developing a city worthy of civic pride, not an imitation of European cities.

• Promoting the happiness, health and comfort of all residents, rather than focusing on roads and parks available only to the rich.

• Control over future growth with adequate provision for future requirements

Work in India :

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The master plan of Tel Aviv (Isreal) : Geddes planned the city in 1925 so that

it would answer its residents’ spiritual and material needs by taking into account factors ranging from climate and social structure to income.

He believed in fostering human interaction by bringing people together naturally in public places, such as squares, parks and streets; he did not believe in separating the commercial centre from the residential areas lest the former become ghost town during non- working hours.

Residential buildings were to be low rise, airy, aesthetically pleasing and inexpensive.

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Tel Aviv is now frequently referred to as a “ Living Museum” of Modern Architecture.

UNESCO designed Tel Aviv (White city) as a world heritage site in 2003.

It is Israel's 2nd largest city (after Jerusalem) and the country’s business and cultural center.

At present “ Traffic congestion” is the main problem of this city.

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Influences Geddes' ideas had worldwide circulation: his most famous admirer

was the American urban theorist Lewis Mumford who claimed that "Geddes was a global thinker in practice, a whole generation or more before the Western democracies fought a global war".

Geddes also influenced several British urban planners (notably Raymond Unwin), the Indian social scientist Radhakamal Mukerjee and the Catalan architect Cebrià de Montoliu(1873–1923) as well as many other 20th century thinkers.

Geddes' work on regional surveys, cultural evolution, and urban sociology has become even more noticed since his death

His Outlook Tower and view on life serves as a catalyst for today's sustainable city movement.

“Geddes’ great achievement has been the making of a bridge between Biology and Social Science,” wrote his biographer Lewis Mumford

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He saw the city as a series of common interlocking patterns, ‘an inseparably interwoven structure’, like to a flower. He criticized the tendency of modern scientific thinking to specialization. In his ‘Report to the H.H. the Maharaja of Kapurthala’ in 1917 he wrote:“Each of the various specialists remains too closely concentrated upon his single specialism, too little awake to those of the others. Each sees clearly and seizes firmly upon one petal of the six-lobed flower of life and tears it apart from the whole.”

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